REALIZE-CA is working with affordable housing building owners, manufacturers, community organizations, and policymakers to develop a statewide net-zero retrofit program. To achieve California’s aggressive climate goals, we work to standardize and streamline retrofit packages using building decarbonization technologies.
REALIZE-CA hopes to:
REALIZE-CA retrofits are customizable and feature:
We will combine deep energy efficiency and electrification, paired with renewable energy and load-shifting technologies, to meet the unique needs of California multifamily housing.
Affordable housing building owners throughout California have already committed over 60,000 units to REALIZE-CA zero-carbon retrofits.
Contact us today at realize@rmi.org for a free consultation and add your building to the retrofit revolution.
Buildings account for nearly 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in California and are key to achieving the state’s targets for reducing carbon emissions. At the same time, low-income residents face a disproportionate energy burden, with energy spending up to three times higher than non-low-income households, based on data from the US Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool. This heightened challenge of affordability and environmental impact presents an urgent opportunity for innovative solutions.
Inspired by Energiesprong in the Netherlands, the team is working on developing retrofit packages that are standardized and easy to deploy, reduce tenant disruption, and achieve zero-carbon operations.
REALIZE-CA is focused on catalyzing the development of a speedy and scalable process for zero-carbon residential energy retrofits, with major efforts focused on technology development and deployment, as well as market facilitation. Inspired by Energiesprong in the Netherlands, the team is working on developing retrofit packages that are standardized and easy to deploy, reduce tenant disruption, and achieve zero-carbon operations. With those goals in mind, we will combine deep energy efficiency with electrification paired with renewable energy and load-shifting technologies to overcome the unique challenges of California multifamily housing and start a retrofit revolution in California.
REALIZE-CA is demonstrating retrofit solutions on over 300,000 square feet of pilots in California. These pilots will demonstrate advanced building construction processes and pre-integrated decarbonization technologies that are meant to reduce retrofit delivery times, costs, and tenant disruptions. These demonstration sites will act as “prototypes” to demonstrate the applicability and the design and delivery approach for the prefabricated retrofit systems—namely all-in-one mechanical pods and exterior retrofit panels.
At the same time, REALIZE-CA is working with financiers, affordable housing experts, and state agencies to pave the way for a rapid scale-up of decarbonization retrofits. These market-based activities include developing standardized financing tools for affordable housing, overcoming the split incentive, working to breakdown policy barriers, aggregating demand, and coordinating supply side manufacturers.
REALIZE-CA is targeting low- and mid-rise multifamily buildings in California, which represent over 82 percent of existing multifamily units in the state. The solutions we are testing are designed to be standardized and transferable across the most common typologies within these two categories. We are also testing multiple variations of retrofit packages for each typology to give building owners more flexibility in how they choose to decarbonize their buildings.
Corona Del Rey in Corona will demonstrate prefabricated exterior retrofit panels and an all-in-one mechanical pod, while electrifying all 40 buildings on the site and installing solar PV.
Light Tree in East Palo Alto will conduct a holistic electrification retrofit that will include heat pumps for space conditioning and domestic hot water, a structural upgrade, and a full exterior recladding.
Vera Cruz Village in Ridgecrest will install all-electric space conditioning and domestic hot water systems, new windows, a prefabricated roof panel system, and solar PV.
Kingsview Manor in Fresno will implement an emerging heat pump space conditioning system, window upgrades, re-roofing, and solar PV.
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